PITTSBURG — When Roosevelt Terry was sentenced to prison for petty theft in 1994, he had no reason to think he was ever getting out.

It wasn’t so much the petty theft but his two previous felony convictions — for robbery and assault with a firearm — that seemed to seal Terry’s fate under the state’s Three Strikes sentencing law. But when it finally sank in that he was a lifer, he decided to make a radical life change.

“I started praying hard prayers, like, ‘God, if this is where you want me to be — if this is my station for the rest of my life — then let me excel here,'” Terry, 55, said. He got an education, joined inmate advisory councils and eventually scored a job helping inmates learn to read and write.

It was a decision that wouldn’t pay huge dividends for Terry until nearly 20 years later, after he was unexpectedly released amid California’s decision to stop counting nonviolent offenses as a third strike. Within two years of his release, Terry was given a job with Contra Costa Health Services, working with formerly incarcerated residents.

“The thing that’s most ironic to me is, reentry is hot right now,” Terry said. “And here I am, with the perfect background for that type of work. … In that sense, I don’t regret my past, because it made me who I am today.”

He does so-called “reentry work” in other ways, like helping a former Pittsburg mayor and other city leaders arrange weekend breakfasts between formerly incarcerated residents and their kids, or serving on the county’s Community Corrections Partnership.

“Roosevelt Terry is one of those unique individuals who combines strength and power, along with purity in purpose,” said Gregory Osorio, a well-known community leader in Pittsburg.

Osorio said Terry’s life story and “heart filled with love for the people” give him the ability to effectively reach formerly incarcerated people.

Terry admits that he spent his youth going down a self-destructive path. He was raised in a two-parent household and excelled in school before his teens. But as a teenager in Richmond during the 1970s, he dropped out of high school and left the house to sell drugs.

“I told my mom that I was going to go make a million dollars and that I’d be back,” Terry said. “And I really believed that too; but that’s not exactly how it went.”

He became caught in a cycle of violence, convicted of assault with a firearm in the mid-1980s and barely surviving several stab wounds to his torso in the early ’90s. When he received his life sentence for being convicted of stealing a wallet, he says, “it was the least severe thing I was ever accused of doing.”

“If I had been out on the streets during those years I was in prison, I probably wouldn’t be here speaking to you right now,” Terry said. But at the same time, he said, the three-strikes law “devastated” Richmond.

“All the fathers were removed from the community,” Terry said. “Once three-strikes got through having its way with the community, the average age of men in Richmond went way down.”

After his 1994 petty theft conviction, Terry was booked into Corcoran State Prison, the first of four facilities where he’d spend more than 18 years total. There was still a small voice in his head, he said, “that told me, ‘This is not gonna be the end.'”

His first step was to learn “the King’s perfect English, a little Latin and California statutes,” he said.

“What they’ve done to me — or what I’ve done to myself — that’s in a book,” Terry said. “So, like I would tell others in prison: read the books, learn why you’re here, give it some serious thought. As I kept studying, it raised a transformative way of thinking.”

In the midst of this, Terry saw a glimmer of hope after California voters passed Prop. 36 in 2012, making thousands of offenders eligible for release. Chief Public Defender Robin Lipetzky took on Terry’s case, along with about a dozen other lifers. He was transferred to County Jail and released within a year.

“It seemed like he was not only worthy of early release but someone who could do some good in the world,” Lipetzky said. “He was wasting away serving a life sentence and now he’s out in the world doing great work.”

While Terry was in jail, Lipetzky introduced him to Vernon Williams III, a Contra Costa community leader whose own path mirrors Terry’s. Williams served 16 months in San Quentin after a drug conviction but then became a youth mentor and is currently running for a seat on the Vallejo City Council. He was impressed by Terry and agreed to help him find employment after his release.

“I could see in him the fabric that he was cut from; he was a real soldier,” Williams said. “And the thing about real soldiers is if you can direct their energy and focus into something positive, there’s nothing that can stop them. … All he needed was a hand up; not a handout, a hand up.”

Terry now lives in Pittsburg because of its “strong community” that reminds him of Richmond before the crack era. After becoming a free man, he returned to the Richmond neighborhood where he sold drugs decades ago. As he was driving he was overcome with emotion, and had to pull over to the side of the road.

“I’d been gone 18 years and 211 days,” Terry said. “And a lot of the guys that I knew from back then hadn’t made it any further in life than five blocks down the street.”

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